


Do Some Good, Do Something Real

by BansheeofLetters (sultrybutdamaged)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: But he's always there anyway, Case Fic, Could maybe be read as Sastiel if you really squint, Dean Winchester - Freeform, Gen, I mean technically he is not there, Kevin Tran (mentioned) - Freeform, Post-Episode: s09e11 First Born, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Season 9, cas and sam friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sultrybutdamaged/pseuds/BansheeofLetters
Summary: That was another thing he’d observed about the Winchesters: sometimes, when they’d hit a particular low point in whatever cosmic struggle they’d become entangled in, one of them would suggest a more mundane hunting case, a milk run they called them, and somehow shooting a monster or banishing a ghost would put them back on top.  Castiel didn’t understand it, but it was a tried-and-true method and he needed something.
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 22
Collections: #ficwip 2020 gift exchange





	Do Some Good, Do Something Real

**Author's Note:**

  * For [juliasets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliasets/gifts).



> This is a holiday exchange gift for juliasets, who requested Sam-centric casefic. This is my first time writing SPN (and one of my favorite characters of all time) in... yikes, twelve years? And probably my first casefic ever. I hope you like the result.
> 
> This fic is also dedicated to Cheryl, since I once promised her that if I ever wrote Supernatural again, I would use this pseud.

Sam drifted awake to a crick in his neck, his left knee jammed awkwardly against the dash and an ache beginning to pound behind his eyes from the slant of the sun through the windshield.The disquieting remnants of dreams that were not his were already fading, replaced by the mundane noises of a highway gas station, impatient horns and voices, the low roar of traffic just out of sight. 

He blinked slowly, and he was ten years old, hiding angry tears about another move so his father wouldn’t notice and dreaming of a future he hadn’t fully been able to believe in; he was twenty-two and waking from a vision of some stranger’s death to a migraine and jokes about spoon-bending and his brother’s barely concealed worry; he was twenty-eight and biting back Lucifer’s name as he opened his eyes so that Dean wouldn’t -

Then his brain finally caught up, and he was in the present again.The angle of the sun was slightly wrong, this car lacking a windshield as broad as the Impala’s; the space between the door and the seat-back wasn’t the one Sam had slept in for a decade until it felt like the car should have shaped itself to his body.The creak of the driver’s side door opening was just slightly wrong, and brought with it the disquieting scent of ozone, not leather and gun oil.

It said something about his life, Sam thought with the last haziness of a dream, that waking up aching and uncomfortable, with fading horrors that might or might not belong to him behind his eyes, felt like coming home. 

_Nothing there that you didn’t already know_ , he thought, and pushed the thought aside.

Castiel was back in the car, watching him with patient curiosity.The chill that ran over Sam’s skin at the distant feel of angelic grace faded in front of his curious, too-intense blue stare.Sam cleared his throat and ran his hands back through his hair, trying not to worry about how the familiarity of Castiel overrode the fear of angels - _it’s not like angels can’t lie, it’s not like they can’t be one thing and say they are another, Lucifer wore Jess and Dean and Dad, Gadreel was supposedly a nice guy_ \- forcing himself fully awake.“Sorry, man,” he said.“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

“I don’t know why you would be at fault for your body needing rest.”Castiel put the car in gear, maneuvering away from the gas-pump.Sam wondered if Dean had been the one to teach him to drive, during some previous period where Sam had been too untrustworthy or sick or insane to be around.“But failing to admit to ordinary mortal needs seems to be another aspect of Winchester stubbornness.”The angel’s gravely voice conveyed disapproval without any actual change in inflection.

Sam grinned, ignoring the little twinge he felt whenever Cas used “Winchester” as a category, as though they were the same.“It’s just an expression,” he said.“You apologize for inconveniencing people, even if it’s not your fault.”

_Sorry for falling asleep on you.Sorry you have to follow me around instead of getting on with whatever angel business you have, to make sure my body doesn’t fall apart again.Sorry for burning a kid’s eyes out from the inside out, you know how it is when you’re possessed, not your fault._

“Hmm.”Castiel sent him a sideways glance, and Sam felt, not for the first time, that the angel knew what he was thinking.He had to assume that wasn’t really true, because he and Dean had both lied to Cas plenty over the years without getting caught, but again and again over the past few weeks, Sam had thought about Kevin, or about Gadreel, or about Dean in less flattering terms, and glanced up to see Castiel watching him with that same disapproving expression.It was oddly reassuring, that even with heaven and hell in disarray, with Dean off hunting on his own and Sam’s sense of reality broken up and scattered once again, that the one consistency in his life was apparently his ability to annoy their own personal angel. 

That, or all of this was a hallucination and Cas really could read his mind, because he was _something else_ , but Sam had decided not to think about that.He’d kicked out Gadreel, and Crowley.If there was anyone left, some Inception-level possession, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. 

And he didn’t think so.Even Lucifer had never been able to get Castiel exactly right.

“You got the gas okay?” he asked.

“Human life is full of bewildering mysteries,” Cas said, “but the one thing I did learn to do reliably in my time as one of you was pump gas.”He nudged a plastic bag on the seat between them in Sam’s direction.“Also, convenience store purchases.”

Sam picked up the bag and dug through it.There was a wilted-looking salad in a plastic container, a package of jerky, a chocolate bar.“Wow, Cas, it’s like you’ve spent your whole life on the road,” he said. 

“I existed long before there were roads,” Cas said, with that blank-faced literalism that Sam was almost sure was a joke.“And you like salads.”

“I do,” Sam said, touched, though he couldn’t imagine many things less appealing than convenience store lettuce.“Thanks.You didn’t happen to think of coffee too, did you?”

The disapproving look was back, though Cas pointed to the steaming cup.“Non-dairy creamer and one sweetener.”

A little pit of something warm opened up in Sam’s chest at the thought of Cas knowing how he took his coffee.The only other person who could have done that was Dean, who would have accompanied the gift with a grumble about _girly fake sugar_ and _what the hell is the point of cream that’s not from cows, Sam?That’s California bullshit._ He picked up the cup and took a sip. 

“Thanks,” he said.“You don’t want me to drive?”

“It’s not necessary,” Cas said.“I’ve come to enjoy driving.It doesn’t have the convenience of flying but I do like seeing where I’ve been and not just where I’m going.Angels miss so much.”He spoke with the same musing tone he’d used the other day, describing his love of sandwiches.“You could sleep again if you’d like,” he added.“I don’t believe we have much further to go.”

He probably could.Sam had been sleeping in cars his whole life; one car, mostly, and always with his brother in the background, humming along to the music and tapping at the wheel, the familiar little sounds of another person he knew better than himself lulling him to sleep.He couldn’t say the same about Castiel, but he thought maybe he could close his eyes again and drift off to the tingle of angelic grace against his awareness, the uniquely safe feel of Castiel, though Sam couldn’t say how he knew the difference, only that whatever instinct kept him on edge around other angels didn’t apply to this one.Odd, considering that Castiel’s grace was no longer even really his own. 

Of course, it had turned out Sam’s “instinct” for angels had a fairly huge gap when it came to those who were _actually inside him_ , so maybe the whole the thing was just crap and Sam had been fooling himself for years.He’d never been safe.

“No thanks,” he said, and reached instead for the stack of notes he’d brought on the case.Their case.His and Castiel’s.“I want to go over these one more time.”

Castiel frowned but let it go.That was another thing Sam had observed; Cas might not approve of the things he did, but he didn’t try to intervene until Sam, say, tried to get himself killed.Until then he would sit stiffly and make fussy little twitches of disagreement, but he wouldn’t do anything.He wouldn’t take away Sam’s choices.

“So,” Sam said, opening up his notes, speaking out loud automatically, like he would have done if it was Dean in the driver’s seat.“We have three disappearances, all teenagers…”

***

There was no need for Castiel to listen to the details of the case.He had been the one to find it, and he had a perfect memory.But Sam seemed to get reassurance from repeating things out loud that had already been said, so Castiel didn’t interrupt.It gave him a chance to observe the younger Winchester.

Sam was still tired, he decided, but less worryingly so.He was drinking the coffee he didn’t need and ignoring the salad, which was a disappointment; even as a human, Castiel had not appreciate the taste of lettuce, but Sam’s diet consisted heavily of what Dean called “rabbit food” and Cas had hoped he was getting this right.With Dean, it was easy; buy a pie, or a hamburger, preferably with bacon attached, and Dean would eat it.Dean’s problem was in indulgence; certainly Castiel had thought many times about hiding the bottles Dean accumulated when his mood darkened or his dreams turned bloody.Sam’s vices lay in the opposite direction, in stubborn denial of food or sleep past the point when he obviously needed it, and that was a problem Castiel didn’t know how to solve. 

Sam, it was turning out, had all kinds of problems Cas didn’t know how to solve.

_Take care of my brother,_ Dean had said when he left them on the bridge.Castiel knew the older Winchester had assumed it was something the angel would do for him.And a few years ago it would have been, but it had been a long time since Sam had been just Dean’s brother, the bewildering Boy with the Demon Blood, full of his unexpected contradictions, his unique mix of power and gentleness, of selfish stubbornness and reckless self-abnegation.Cas would have healed Sam for Dean’s sake, but he had done it for Sam himself as well. _You are just as much my charge as your brother is_ , he’d said, because it was true but also because saying _my friend_ would have made Sam uncomfortable, or gained him only one of those puzzled looks, like Sam was trying to figure out the loophole in Castiel’s words, the way in which this statement of his worth really meant anything else.

But friend was the correct term, and friends helped each other.Castiel knew that much.The problem was that nothing about being human for those few months had taught him to understand what Sam actually needed from him, never mind how to grant it.

This should have been easier, he thought, frustrated, as Sam droned on about missing teenagers and signs of spirit activity.He’d been watching the Winchesters help each other for years.But it was a delicate dance, and he didn’t know the steps.When it came to life-threatening dangers, Sam and Dean were the least subtle people on the planet, turning to demon deals and breaking every law of his father’s creation to protect each other.But these smaller problems, the kind that left Sam pacing the bunker at all hours of the night and pushing away plates of food to bury himself in old books on angelic lore, murmuring the names of dead friends to himself behind the closed door of his bedroom and rubbing at the old scar on his hand with the absent expression that suggested he didn’t know he was doing it, Castiel didn’t know what to do about those, or even if he needed to do anything.Maybe this was normal.Maybe Sam would just snap out of it on his own.But Cas had been waiting for over a week as they researched ways to track Metatron and Gadreel, and if anything, Sam was getting worse.

Dean would know.Cas had pulled up Dean’s name on his phone every night for the last week and stared at it, thinking that Dean would want to know that Sam, even though he had been healed, looked more drawn and exhausted each day.But Sam didn’t want him to know, and Cas was loathe to break the trust that had grown up between them.It was the same reason why he didn’t just put his fingers to Sam’s forehead and knock him unconscious for eight hours.He had no idea why Sam trusted him, given their history, given Sam’s history with angels in general, but Sam had given him that trust the first time he’d held out his hand for Castiel to shake and he’d never retracted it despite ample reason.It was a gift, unasked for but precious, and Cas would not betray it again.So calling Dean was not an option, at least not yet.

Sometimes Dean and Sam were able to bring each other out of these dark periods with a speech.Cas had rarely been in a position to observe the speeches, but occasionally he got to hear about them afterwards, and, too, he’d read the Winchester Gospels, many volumes of which included such a scene at a climactic moment.But Cas had already tried that too. _Nothing is worth losing you_ , he’d said, a Dean Winchester-worthy line if he did say so.In the moment, it had seemed to work.Sam had given him a look of amazed appreciation, eyes softened and mouth parted with surprise, as though the idea that Castiel considered him at all had never occurred to him before.And he’d listened, a miracle in itself.He’d stopped insisting on extracting more of Gadreel’s grace; he’d agreed that the plan had been reckless and unworthy of his life.He’d given Castiel a hug, which the angel understood the Winchesters only reserved for extreme situations.Castiel had congratulated himself that night on fixing something far more important than the last lingering burns on Sam’s internal organs.

And then in the morning, Sam had turned up, not looking much better than he had with a needle sticking out of his neck, and he’d thrown himself into digging through everything the Men of Letters had on angels, without pause to eat or sleep or shower, and if he wasn’t trying to actively sacrifice himself on the pyre of his guilt over the poor dead prophet, Castiel couldn’t say this situation was really any better.

It was frustrating.Infuriating.Castiel might have tried just yelling at Sam to care as much about his own life as he did everyone else’s, if he hadn’t known what a lost cause that was.

So then, he’d thought, a case.That was another thing he’d observed about the Winchesters: sometimes, when they’d hit a particular low point in whatever cosmic struggle they’d become entangled in, one of them would suggest a more mundane hunting case, a milk run they called them, and somehow shooting a monster or banishing a ghost would put them back on top.Castiel didn’t understand it, but it was a tried-and-true method and he needed something.

And he’d liked hunting, on the few occasions when he’d accompanied the brothers at their “day job.”Angels were trained to care about the big picture; it wasn’t until he’d begun spending time with the Winchesters that he’d realized how full of the small and the strange his father’s creation really was, and how every ghost or werewolf Sam and Dean defeated probably saved more lives than their entanglements with his own kind. 

He’d managed to find a hunt.Three teenagers who’d disappeared in a small town only a few hours drive from Lebanon.When he’d presented it too Sam, the hunter had looked skeptical, but slowly it had drawn his attention, and eventually he’d agreed to check it out.This was going to work, Castiel had thought.They would finish this case, save the people, kill the thing threatening them, and Sam would be fixed. 

And Castiel could be rid of the dread that had followed him since Sam had whispered _my life isn’t worth more than anyone else’s_ and told him to drive the needle in further.

***

Sam didn’t think much of Castiel’s case.

It was definitely a real spirit.Something more than a simple ghost, maybe a poltergeist or one of the higher classes of spirits, smart and in control enough to bend the perceptions of its victims.The three teenagers who’d disappeared had been visiting an old cabin that one of their families had recently inherited. By the time Cas had found the articles about it, two had come back, missing three days worth of time and without their memories or their friend.The angel had even done the research to figure out that this was a repeating pattern going back almost a century: a group of people went into the house, one vanished, the others were released. 

“It’s a case,” Castiel had said, when Sam just looked from him to the research and back, confused.

“I get that.”Maybe it was the less than three-hours of sleep he’d had or the excessive caffeine pumping through his blood, but his eyes kept drifting away from the material Cas had put together and back to the stack of old books scattered across the library table.The Men of Letters had a ridiculous amount of research on angels, considering supposedly there hadn’t been many interacting with humans before the Apocalypse.Nothing like the tracking the spell, not yet, but he’d found everything from etymologies on angelic names to an entire chapter of banishing sigils.It had been hard to resist stopping his research to paint the whole bunker with those.Maybe with then he could get up to four hours of sleep before he was driven out of bed by the feel of something moving the shadows of his room and the crawl of presence beneath his skin.

He found his fingers drifting to the old scar on his palm and made himself stop, looking up at the angel.Castiel had clearly noticed the aborted gesture, but didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, it’s a case,” Sam said, trying to pick up the thread of what they were talking about.A nice thing about Castiel was that he didn’t seem to mind when Sam got distracted in the middle of a conversation and trailed off.He just stood there and waited.Very different from Dean, who began to panic the moment Sam acted the slightest bit unsure of reality, concern that Sam firmly reminded himself he did not miss.“I can probably find someone to take it.We have contacts.Thanks, Cas.”He forced a smile.“You did good, finding this.”

Sometimes Castiel did human things and seemed to revel in being praised for them.Other times, Sam got an abrupt reminder that this was a millennia old being who probably saw him as the equivalent of an ant, and his approval about as relevant.Castiel’s face took on a stern expression.“The case is for you,” he said, in a voice that brooked no opposition.

“Cas, I’m a little busy.”He gestured vaguely towards the stacks of books. 

“You haven’t made any progress on finding Gadreel in over a week.As I have completely failed to find Metatron.”Sam opened his mouth to say that Castiel might get further if he didn’t get distracted looking up spirit hauntings - and yeah, okay, he’d probably just get a reminder that Cas had more time, he didn’t need to sleep, unlike some people _Sam_ \- but the angel overrode him.“We need a break.An old fashioned hunt.It will help you get your head back in the game.Do you some good.” 

He said the words like they were in a language he barely spoke, then stood there blinking, waiting for a reaction.He was so obviously quoting Dean that Sam wanted to snap at him.Instead he sat back in his chair, running his hands through his hair and trying to come up with the words that would convince the angel that Sam was fine, his head was as in the game as it ever was, there was nothing to worry about.He did it all the time, for everyone. _I’m fine, Cas, just a little tired_ , he should say. _Just trouble sleeping, no big deal.Sure, every time I close my eyes I’m either dreaming someone else’s memories of murders or remembering things I’m pretty sure Gadreel planted in my head, and occasionally when I’m awake I glimpse something out of the corner of my eye and wonder if it’s angel wings, and if they’re coming from me, but let’s be real, that’s only slightly worse than Sam Winchester’s head on the average day, so really, nothing to worry about._

“I just need to cut back on the coffee, I think,” he tried.

Dean would have bought it - or, well, no, Dean wouldn’t have, not for a second, but he would have pretended to buy it.He would have kept watching Sam, prodding him, trying to trick him into sleeping or eating or whatever it was Dean decided he needed to feel better, but he wouldn’t have pushed the issue.Sam had liked to think of that as Dean respecting his wishes, even though if he was being honest with himself he knew it was just Dean having a lifetime’s experience with Sam’s stubbornness and how pointless it was to keep slamming himself against it.Dean had learned to work around Sam’s idiosyncrasies, just as Sam knew how to work with his brother’s.

Well.Not exactly like.Dean had apparently had techniques Sam had never considered.

Cas tried none of that.He just stood there, immoveable and impossibly patient, with vivid blue eyes that could hold Sam’s without blinking, probably for hours.The space between them thrummed with that oddly familiar grace, tingling against Sam’s skin and prodding at the bubble of unreality that had surrounded him for the last two weeks, and Sam found himself caving.It was stupid, it was nonsensical, but even after all this time, after the Apocalypse and Lucifer and Gadreel, some tiny, idiotic part of him didn’t want to disappoint this angel. 

He picked up the file - color-coordinated by subject matter, each article printed out and accompanied by notes in Castiel’s stiff writing, he’d really gone all out - intending to find some evidence that this was really a case better suited for Garth or Annie or someone… and the first image when he opened the folder caught his eye.He paused, scanning the page, drawn back again to the picture. 

It wasn’t that strong a resemblance, really, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. 

After a moment, he tossed down the folder.“Fine,” he said.“We’ll check it out.”Cas reacted with a minute relaxing of his facial muscles which was the equivalent of a grin on someone else, and Sam couldn’t help feeling a little good about that.At least he was making someone happy. 

And that was why they were now in the living room of the Chambers family, listening while Melinda Chambers, a devoted single mother, regaled them with stories of her son’s musical skill.

“He wants to play cello in college,” she said.“He doesn’t need it to get it, he has top grades too, but music is his passion.”Her voice wavered on the present tense, so Sam gave her an encouraging nod.Dave Chambers’ friends had all come back from their trip to the cabin; there was no reason for his mother to know that in every case going back as far as Cas had been able to find, there had been someone who hadn’t returned. 

She didn’t look like Linda Tran at all, he thought, except that she was raising a son alone.She was taller, softer, tremulous in the face of the FBI.She didn’t seem like the type who had pushed her son at all; by her account, Dave’s success in everything was his own initiative.Dave himself didn’t really resemble Kevin, either, so Sam couldn’t say why seeing the little victim profile Cas had put together, with its mention of Dave’s honor roll status and college ambitions, had felt like a blow.Only that Dave looked like an earnest, maybe too-intense kid, the kind Kevin would have grown up to be if angels and destiny and the Winchesters hadn’t blown up his life.He kept expecting the room around him to shift, for it to be Kevin’s pictures on the wall, for Linda to be in front of him berating him for failing her son, again.

Lucifer would have done it that way.He liked to build his illusions out of Sam’s memories, the more distressful the better.Gadreel was dull by comparison.The cases he’d put Sam on were mundane, but then he’d been going for distraction, not pain.Maybe Sam should be grateful.

But this wasn’t a hallucination, he reminded himself.This was a real case. Instinctively, he felt himself reaching for the sensation of Castiel’s grace beside him, out of place in any of his possessors’ false memories and so grounding.

“Can you tell us about the cabin?” Cas asked in his solemn voice, picking up where Sam had dropped their questioning of the victim’s mother so smoothly that she wouldn’t notice a thing.It seemed like Cas had finally learned enough about hunting to carry his half of the job.Sam sent him a grateful, embarrassed smile.Dean would have covered Sam’d distraction just as easily, all while shooting Sam those looks that said _I know something is up with you_ , the ones that made him simultaneously feel protected and incompetent.Cas wouldn’t mention his slip.

Melinda Chambers started talking, and Sam found himself drifting again, only half-listening as she described the cabin she’d inherited from a cousin she barely knew, how she’d wanted to get rid of it but Dave had jumped at the opportunity to take some friends someplace “spooky” for the night.“He was into those types of things,” she said.“Horror movies and all that stuff kids like.I guess you know more about that than I do.”She laughed a little, and Sam thought, _right, because we’re young._

He cast a bemused look at Castiel, realizing only when the angel tilted his head in confusion that of course it was only funny on Castiel’s end.Sam was thirty-one.That he had enough extra memories for a couple more centuries on top of that was beside the point.

Cas again stepped into the breach.“This may sound like an odd question,” he said, leaning forward to meet Melinda’s eyes very earnestly.“But do you know if anyone has ever died in your cabin?”

“We’ll have to go out there tonight,” Sam said as they walked to the car, now armed with Melinda’s story about an elderly great-grandaunt of her husband’s cousin who might have passed away in the cabin.The sun was slowly going down and the air was cool; it cleared his head a little.Lucifer had never gotten things like the scent of winter right.Gadreel hadn’t bothered.“Dave has only been missing for three days.Some victims have come back as much as a week later.”It was a chance, anyway.

Cas nodded gravely.“None who disappeared alone, though,” he said.

That was true.That was a pattern.Groups disappeared, and came trickling back out, but once it was down to only one, that person never came back.

“You promised that woman you would bring her son back,” Castiel said.Sam couldn’t tell if that was disapproval in his voice or just confusion. 

He had promised.When they were leaving the house, he’d taken Mrs. Chambers’ hand and looked her in the eye, _all-that-empathy-for-the-victim-charm_ Dean called it, and he’d made a promise he probably had no way of keeping.Add it to the list.At least he hadn’t called her “Mrs. Tran.”

“I did,” he said, and didn’t add anything further.Castiel didn’t ask.

***

Castiel was becoming less sure that this hunt had been a good idea. 

He’d been thrown when Sam had seemed less than interested, despite all of Castiel’s careful research and organization.If it had been Dean he was trying to convince, Cas would not have bothered, but Sam appeared to enjoy the research parts of hunting more than the actual killing things, so Cas had leaned into that.And Sam had complimented his system for organizing his notes, but he still hadn’t taken much interest in the case - not until he’d seen the “profile” (Cas was particularly proud of that detail) that he’d put together on Dave Chambers.

He should have realized the problem, but in his defense, the details of human lives, unless they were extraordinary ones like Sam and Dean’s, didn’t stick out for him.Now that he’d actually lived one, he understood that there were an infinite variety of ways that humans lived and worked and loved and entertained themselves, all of them beautiful in their own ways, but it still hadn’t occurred to him that Sam would read about a teenage boy who played classical music and dreamed of college and see Kevin Tran.Castiel had only distantly known these things about Kevin himself, though the boy’s name had been imprinted on him for millennia before he was born.In the grand scheme of things, those details hadn’t been relevant, not to the angel Castiel had been then.

The one he was now, the one who’d worked a minimum wage job and had a favorite meal, understood better.But not, he thought, remembering Sam’s stricken face when he’d seen the file, like Sam did.

It was obviously the possibility of saving a boy who reminded him of Kevin that had finally driven Sam out of the Bunker.And Cas should be grateful for that, if only because Sam had slept for several hours in the car and eaten a few bites of salad, so he was failing slightly less in his duties to “take care of” him, except that Sam had been behaving… oddly, since they left.Cas had had enough opportunities to observe Sam while he was working over the years to know that Sam usually focused very intently on whatever job he was on, not liking when something (or someone, usually Dean) drew his attention away from his total focus on the victims.But today Sam’s attention seemed drawn again and again but something only he could see; he drifted off into his thoughts several times while they were talking to Dave Chambers’ mother, and when he was focused, it was with an odd intensity, like Sam was trying to see beneath the surface of what was going on around him, like he was looking for something that wasn’t there.

It was better than his single-minded focus the afternoon they’d tried to extract Gadreel’s grace, better than his insistence on “paying his debts.”But it still left Castiel feeling disturbed, like there was something he was missing.

After leaving the Chambers house, they’d spent several hours researching the cabin where the boy had disappeared and the death of the woman there a century earlier.Castiel was embarrassed to admit he knew very little about spirits, other than that they were the corrupted souls of people who’d refused to answer the call of reapers.Once, he would have disdained them, refusing to accept his father’s gift of Heaven; now, he pitied them, locked out and trapped.But Sam understood them, knew all kinds of things about how they functioned and what their vulnerabilities were and why some of them had some abilities and others didn’t.Luckily he was happy to explain (lecture, Dean would have said) everything he was thinking, and so as they worked, Sam gave him a long discourse on spirits and their ability to trap and harm mortals, how they might be banished, the significance of finding the items that they were bound to and destroying them.Not all of this was new information, but Castiel still enjoyed hearing it.It was strange to think that he’d once found Sam’s voice grating; now it was soothing to listen to him organize the chaos of the world he lived in by rules and problems to be solved and come up with a plan, thinking aloud the whole time.His voice picked up in excitement when he came across a particularly odd or compelling detail, and Cas found himself thinking that he would like to hear that sound more often.And as long as he was absorbed in the case, Sam remained in the present, no drifting off or forgetting what they were talking about or playing with the scar on his hand.Castiel began to consider that he had been overreacting.Sam was just tired, but he was fine.

He still didn’t like the idea of going to the cabin at night.

“Tonight is the third night since Dave Chambers disappeared,” Sam argued as they parked by the entrance to the cabin property.Sam had explained the importance of parking just off the property - “sometimes the spirits can mess with cars” - and was now unloading equipment from the trunk.Castiel recognized the salt-loaded shotguns and the odd device called an EMF reader that the Winchesters had used before when he’d been with them.“If we don’t find him tonight, there isn’t much chance.”

“Sam,” Cas said carefully.“There isn’t much chance anyway. You said yourself, in each case where a group has gone missing, there was always one who didn’t return.”

Sam’s jaw set in a stubborn line Castiel recognized.“Three nights, Cas,” he said.“If we can find Kev - “

There was a pause.Castiel did not, technically, breathe, at least no more than he needed to speak, so he couldn’t say he was holding his breath, but it felt like that.A sudden stillness in the quiet night.Sam’s eyes had gone glassy, distant, for just a minute before he refocused.

“Dave,” he said carefully.“If we can find Dave before the end of third night, there’s a chance. “

“Sam - “

“We need to go.”Sam hefted the shotgun and set out for the cabin, shoulders squared, back deliberately turned.Cas had no choice but to follow.

Sam had promised the boy’s mother that he would bring back her son.Cas might not have been a hunter, but he’d watched the Winchesters hunt for long enough to know how likely that actually was. 

_Being human means paying your debts._ He wondered what promises had ever been made to Kevin Tran, and who Sam really thought he owed.

***

Sam had been right about one thing: this job was really not very complicated.

Jenny Chambers had been the last permanent resident of the cabin later inherited by Dave’s mother.She’d died of natural causes at the age of ninety-seven, making her unusual for a spirit.Even more unusually, from everything Sam had been able to find, she’d lived a good life - daughter of a prominent family, a happy marriage, a large family of descendants who’d doted on her, though in the end she’d still died alone.She’d left an extremely detailed will that accounted for all her possessions except one - a large and incredibly gaudy brooch that she’d worn in every picture he’d been able to find in the town’s archives.Sam supposed there was a chance that Jenny’s spirit was tied to the earrings she’d left to her daughter or the silver set gifted to a grand-niece, but he was willing to bet on the brooch.He’d worked enough of these jobs to recognize the patterns, and something a person was so attached to that they were never photographed without it was always suspicious when it came to spirits.

If he’d been working with Dean - if he’d been working with another hunter, that would have been self-explanatory, but Castiel wasn’t familiar with the peculiarities of spirits, so Sam had had to explain that it was pointless to try to track down any other items Jenny might have owned when the only one they could reasonably get their hands on tonight was not only likely in the house, but almost certainly the right one.Of course, it didn’t take long to realize that Cas was just making excuses not to go to the cabin that night.

It should have made Sam angry.It would have, he knew, if it were Dean.Saving lives, this was what they did, _the thing that made it all worth it_ , as Crowley had sneered, and maybe Sam wasn’t exactly at the top of his game right now, but he could handle a haunted house in his sleep. _My life isn’t worth more than anyone else’s._

But Castiel… Cas had been watching him for a week, worrying, fussing over him in a quiet and awkward way that softened some of Sam’s self-protective anger over the entire situation.He didn’t need a guardian, but it was nice to think that someone cared, not enough to stop him or to sacrifice someone else for him or put an angel in him, but enough to be concerned.And it made him want to be gentle with Cas in return.

So he tried to assure him, and maybe he would have succeeded, but he’d slipped and used Kevin’s name, and before he’d turned away he’d seen the flash of that look in Castiel’s eyes.The _Sam-isn’t-stable_ look.The _Sam-isn’t-reliable_ look.His anger flared up again, comforting in its strange way.Anger made him feel awake.Anger reminded him of how he’d felt when Crowley said “Poughkeepsie,” when he’d realized that everything he was living was a lie, a fake, _again_.Anger made him feel like all this was real.

“Come on,” he said to Cas, and stalked towards the cabin without bothering to see if the angel followed.

Inside, the layout matched what Melinda Chambers had described: a small house, living room and kitchen on the first floor, bedrooms on the second.Only the first floor was furnished, but a call to Mrs. Chambers had confirmed that there were crates full of old junk on the second floor that might hold a family heirloom like a brooch.“We need to get upstairs,” he started to say as they stepped through the front door, and then a scraping sound caught his attention.

“Sam?”Cas, for all his apparent doubts about Sam’s reliability, was hanging back, shotgun held stiffly but competently, letting the more experienced hunter take the lead.It softened a little of Sam’s annoyance. 

“Go upstairs,” he said.“Find the brooch.I’m going to check down here.”He waved his gun towards the hallway leading down to the back of the house.

Cas hesitated, then nodded.“I’ll be quick,” he said, and jogged up the stairs.

Alone, Sam paced carefully down the hall, gun at the ready.By the entrance to the kitchen, he found a second doorway, this one opening on a staircase leading down into a basement.He pressed his ear to the door, closed his eyes, listening.The muffled sound he’d heard earlier came again.Taking the turn carefully, he began making his way down, holding his breath and moving slowly, trained senses alert for any movement.

He somehow wasn’t prepared to find Dave Chambers.

The boy was lying in the center of the small, dirt-floor cellar, and Sam was so startled he almost tripped over him.The boy was stretched out on his back, eyes closed, hands folded on his chest, and though his pose resembled that of a corpse laid out for burial, he was very clearly breathing.He didn’t react when Sam stepped into the room and called his name, but he wasn’t dead.He looked healthy and alive and -

And Sam’s first thought was, _this isn’t real._

It seemed too easy, too perfect, that he would set out to save this boy who reminded him of Kevin and actually be able to do it, that something would go so right for once, and suddenly he was back in hazy version of the Bunker Gadreel had conjured up, researching a case that would probably go just as well, because Gadreel didn’t have the imagination to mimic the constant clusterfuck of tragedy that was the Winchesters’ lives.Or maybe it _was_ imagination, maybe this was Lucifer, maybe this whole thing was one of his elaborate set-pieces, maybe Gadreel and the Trials, maybe the Bunker, maybe even Dean coming back from Purgatory, none of it was real and -

It was a momentary slip, that was all, the kind he’d been fighting for the last two weeks, the kind he’d slid along the edges for years now, and it only cost him a second.But that was enough.

The spirit hit him from behind, sending him flying, gun spinning off into the darkness.Sam careened across the room and into a wall, and then she was on him, deceptively small but fiercely strong, wind whipping around her, greyscale image of a diminutive lady flickering.Sam fumbled for the extra salt in his pocket but she was a real poltergeist and she pinned him to the wall, icy fingers at his neck. 

Of course.Every monster who’d ever inhabited Sam’s body could have guessed that part.It was more of a cliche than the mysterious noise that drew him to the basement, or the foolish decision to split up from his hunting partner: the monsters always went for Sam’s neck.

Across the room, Dave Chambers didn’t stir.

He fought anyway.He’d always been too stubborn to quit fighting, even when he wasn’t sure there was anything worth fighting for, even when he wasn’t sure the fight was real.Lucifer’s favorite thing about him, or so the Devil claimed, and even that hadn’t been enough to make him change.He struggled, fingers closing around the fistful of salt in his pocket despite his limited range of motion, trying to twist enough to throw it at her before his vision completely blacked out from lack of air.And the whole time she was looking to his eyes, her own colorless gaze flickering.

_Alone_ , she said, in the way spirits had where he couldn’t have said for sure that she spoke out loud. 

_No_ , Sam thought. _I’m never alone.Not even in my own head._

He tried to take a breath, tried to squirm free, but she was both present and not, substantial enough to pin him but so ephemeral that there was nothing to fight against.Like him, like his illusions, but - no.No, that wasn’t right.

Was it?

_Alone_ , she said again, and then, _stay_.Her whispy fingers stroked his cheeks, like icicles, like all spirits felt.Nothing like the bone-grinding cold of the Cage.It cracked the haze around his mind for a minute.

Not _him_ , _alone_.Obviously.She was a spirit, and they were always phenomenally self-centered.

Over her shoulder, he caught a glimpse again of Dave Chambers, still sleeping peacefully.

Of course.She’d brought them here, all those people who’d disappeared, to keep her company.Because the one thing a person who’d lived her life surrounded by others, who’d probably stayed stuck on this plane because of those attachments, couldn’t abide was to be alone.

_Stay_ , she said again.

_Why Dave?_ He thought it in her direction, unable to form the words. _Why keep him and let the others go?_

_Stay_ , she said. _And he will go._

And Sam understood.

She wanted company, but she wasn’t cruel.She wanted a companion, and she didn’t who it was. _If I stay,_ he thought, again carefully forming the words, _you’ll let him go?_

She nodded solemnly. _Stay_.

He wondered what dream she’d put Dave into.Did he have an entire life behind those flickering eyelids?Was it as detailed and imaginative and perverse as something Lucifer could envision, as bland and careless as Gadreel’s dreams? Would it be a dream within a dream, hallucination within hallucination, layer upon layer of something that wasn’t real?

You could do some harm as a spirit, he knew.Not as much as an angel, though. 

A new chill ran across his skin.The scent of ozone filled the room and Sam’s mind cleared, enough to grip the salt in his hands and toss it in her direction.She flicked, vanished, and Sam fell.

“Cas!” he yelled, not bothering to turn to where he knew the angel was standing.“Light her up!”

***

Castiel burst into the basement, brooch in one hand and shotgun in the other, to find Dave Chambers lying motionless on the floor and, more alarmingly, Sam pinned to the far wall, face red and with a tiny, pale figure holding him in place.Sam’s eyes were closed and though he was moving, his struggles were weak.

_Stay_ , he heard the spirit say, and Sam stopped moving altogether.

_No_ , Cas thought, less a word than a fierce burst of emotion, a tangle of rage and guilt and failure and possessiveness. _Every bit as much my charge as your brother_ , he’d called Sam, but until that moment he hadn’t realized how much he meant it.

The fury was so overpowering that he’d dropped the gun and was reaching automatically for his angel blade - _foolish_ , he’d realize later, _against a spirit_ , but the urge to _smite_ didn’t line up with a shotgun in his head - when the spirit suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks and Sam collapsed onto his knees, coughing violently.“Cas!” he choked.“Light her up!”

It was a minor miracle that Cas realized what he meant and didn’t try to smite an invisible woman.He raised the brooch in his hand, vaguely remembering Sam making sure he had matches earlier, but his _charge_ was _hurt_ and Castiel couldn’t be bothered with something so mundane.With a thought, he pulled on his borrowed grace and the brooch burst into white flame, consumed in seconds.

Silence fell over the basement, broken only by Sam’s painful coughing.

“Check Dave first,” the hunter gasped when Cas dropped to his knees beside him.Cas paused long enough for an exasperated look, figuring if Sam could talk he would survive long enough to take some chiding over his ridiculous self-sacrificing tendencies.

“I’m an angel, Sam,” he said.“I can tell that the boy is fine, just asleep.Now let me heal you.” 

He reached out two fingers towards Sam’s forehead - and Sam, who had submitted himself patiently to a week’s worth of healing, who had allowed Castiel to ram a gigantic needle into his neck, who had trusted the angel, undeserved, from the day they met - Sam flinched back.

Cas froze, hand still extended, and met the man’s eyes.Sam didn’t look fearful, but there was a question there, some hesitation or doubt.Something measuring, careful. 

“May I heal you?” Cas asked carefully.

To his surprise, Sam’s face broke into a grin.It was a look Cas hadn’t seen in months, maybe years, and it warmed him to find it aimed in his direction.“You’re the only one who asks,” Sam said, and nodded.Cas set his fingers against the man’s hair, touch careful though there was no real need, and sent out the tendril of his grace.Sam gave a little sigh.“Feels different from others angels,” he murmured, and then, “I recognized you, before.The way your grace feels.It’s - real.You woke me up.”

“And that’s a good thing?” Cas asked, confused but cautiously hopeful.

“It’s a good thing,” Sam assured him.”

***

Dave Chambers was fine.There wasn’t even a bruise on him.He was confused as hell when he woke up missing days worth of time, and even more bewildered when the EMTs who showed up after Sam called his mother couldn’t find an explanation for his period of memory loss, but he was going to be okay.He was going to survive and go home and go to college and play the cello.He got pulled into a tight hug by his mother, and the last Sam saw of him, she was fussing over him in the back of a police cruiser, on their way back to a life that had, only briefly, been interrupted by the touch of the Winchesters.

It was a win, and just for a moment, that was enough to make Sam doubt any of it was true.But then he felt the cool tingle of familiar grace, unquestionably real, and glanced to the side to see Castiel waiting. 

“Ready to go home?” the angel asked, and Sam nodded.

“You want to drive?” he asked.“I think I could use a nap.” 

Castiel tilted his head in acknowledgement, the equivalent of dancing a jig from a human.“I can manage,” he said.

“You were right,” Sam said as they got into the car.“I did need this.We, uh, we did good here, didn’t we?”

“We did,” Cas agreed.He slid behind the driver’s seat, hands hesitating on the wheel.“You said something the other day,” he said. “About being human, and how it means paying your debts.”The angel glanced towards the departing cruiser, with a boy and his mother who were not Kevin and Linda Tran inside them.“Is this… is this something similar?”

Sam shrugged.“I don’t know,” he said.“There are some debts you can’t really repay, you know?Saving one life doesn’t make up for another.It’s not math, adding up columns.”

“Each life is uniquely precious,” Cas agreed.

“I think this is more just… just doing something that matters.Helping people, and trying to make up for some of the crap that’s out there in the world.” _Saving people, hunting things._ For a moment, there wasn’t a touch of resentment tied to the memory of Dean’s long-ago voice.“This is what our lives are,” he said.“This is what’s real.”

***

Sometime an hour or so from Lebanon, Sam snoring quietly on the seat beside him with a half-eaten sandwich on his knee and his head tipped back at a painful angle, Castiel’s cellphone rang.He fumbled around in his pocket, careful to keep his eyes on the road and his other hand firmly gripping the wheel, because angelic powers or not, he had a charge to protect.When he saw the name on the phone’s display, he smiled.

“Dean,” he said, answering.He wasn’t surprised when the man on the other end didn’t give him time for more of a greeting.Nor did it surprise him what the question he had was.

“Yes,” Cas said, turning for another look at the sleeping man beside him.“You don’t need to worry.I think Sam is going to be fine.”

  



End file.
